


In the Wake of the Storm

by EdgeLady



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Omnic Crisis (Overwatch), War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgeLady/pseuds/EdgeLady
Summary: Jack Morrison has the perfect life on a perfect farm with a perfect husband.Until a storm threatens everything.Written for the R76 Secret Santa 2020.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 24
Kudos: 48
Collections: Reaper76 Free For All Secret Santa 2020





	In the Wake of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FuelToFire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuelToFire/gifts).



Jack wakes in the night, suddenly and unpleasantly. He spends several long moments staring into the darkness, listening to the measured breathing of his partner. Searching the silent shadows for whatever had caused him to wake.

But he finds nothing and hears nothing, and slowly that hyper vigilance fades as the comforting steadiness of his husband soothes him back into a relaxed state. When Jack puts an arm around the sleeping form, there’s a bit of stirring and a soft grunt that makes him smile. There is still a bit of discomfort, some distant sense of something not quite right, but it fades.

The darkness claims him again before long.

* * *

Like every day, Jack is up before the dawn, tending to the cows and the goats and the chickens. By the time the sun rises in an intensely blue Indiana summer day, he has put in a couple hours of work and has long since delivered a basket of fresh eggs to the kitchen. With the sun up, he starts the day’s labor, which today involves working on the tractor. It is an old red machine, covered in years of dust and dirt and grass stains, the last one his father had purchased for the farm before his passing, but it is solid and trusty and just needs a tune-up to get back to work.

Jack is crouched beside the big red machine when he hears a sound like metal grinding followed by a small rumble in the distance.

Instantly Jack is on his feet, blue eyes wildly staring about, his hand gripping his wrench like a weapon, ready to launch himself at the nearest adversary.

“Jack?”

Jack whirls, the knuckles of the hand wrapped around the wrench white.

His husband is there, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt beneath a red apron, a smear of white flour across his cheek. He is, and always has been, the most beautiful man Jack had ever had the fortune to lay eyes on, with his broad shoulders, slender waist, impressive thighs, and chiseled face. Perfectly-trimmed beard and dark curls cut short, and the calmest and prettiest caramel-brown eyes Jack had ever seen. Those eyes peer at him now, curious and serene. Already they are having a soothing effect on Jack, some of the tension draining from his shoulders.

Still, he cannot help but look around again with a frown.

“Did you… did you hear that?” he asks.

Gabriel blinks. “Hear what, babe?”

Jack is quiet for a moment longer, but the rumbling and the metal sound don’t come again, and he slowly lets out a deep breath. “Nothing, just… I thought I heard… I don’t know. Trouble, I guess.”

Gabriel laughs, a melodic and beautiful sound, and waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Oh, silly, what kind of trouble are we going to find out here? Come on, let’s get you fed, farm boy.” He turns and walks away, fabulous hips swinging unfairly, as he heads back to the house.

Jack can’t help but stare, because he is weak at the sight of his husband. Always has been, since the day they met. He drops the wrench on the tractor’s seat, flexing a hand aching from tension, and trots after Gabriel. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, babe. Silly.”

He cannot help but glance back at the tractor, eyes sweeping the Indiana plains around them one more time, in search of… something. But then the smell of breakfast hits him from the open door to the kitchen, and he lets go of his unease.

* * *

It happens one night when they are curled up together on the swinging bench on the porch, gazing out at the diamond-studded country sky. There’s a sharp crack in the distance, and Jack, who had been half-dozing with Gabriel resting his head against the blond’s chest, leaps up and forward, eyes darting through the shadows in between pools of silver moonlight beyond.

“Jack, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

Nothing stirs in the darkness but Jack’s body is tense as a bowstring, back ramrod straight, breath coming in fast shallow bursts, fingers closing around the familiar feel of something large and heavy that isn’t there, like the ghost of a big machine that normally rests against his chest. He is certain that any moment, something big and metallic and uncaring will come tearing through the corn stalks with guns blazing--

“Jack?”

Gabriel sounds worried. When his hand rests on Jack’s shoulder, the blond jumps, turning to him wild-eyed. “I heard Ana’s gun, Gabe.”

Gabriel inclines his head slightly to the side with a frown. “Ana?” He frowns but after a moment, his expression clears. “You mean that cute blonde girl at the farmer’s market? That Ana? I doubt that sweet girl has ever held a gun!” He looks out into the quiet dark corn fields for a moment. “I didn’t hear anything, Jack. Let alone a gun. Are you… are you okay? You seem really jumpy lately.”

Jack lets out a deep breath. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

Gabriel chuckles a little, sliding up against him, leaning in for a soft kiss. “Come on. There’s nothing out there. Let’s go to bed, sweetheart.” His kiss becomes more urgent.

Jack’s skin prickles with unease, but he has never been able to say no to his husband. Their lips meet again and again, and slowly the tension drains from his shoulders as he all but melts into Gabriel’s embrace. They are soon stumbling through the house until they fall together into their bed with soft laughs and eager touches and hungry kisses.

* * *

Every day is the same: wake up before the dawn with his husband curled like an octopus around him, attend to the animals, come in to have breakfast prepared by the caring hand of his beloved, go back to work on the fields, have a sandwich and soup and a thermos of fresh coffee brought out to him by the most beautiful man in the world, back to work, and then supper and sleep.

Some days they dance in the kitchen, laughing like schoolchildren. Some days they enjoy the summer breeze on the swinging bench on the porch. Some nights they gaze at a diamond-studded sky before heading inside to make love.

Every day is perfect. Because Gabriel is perfect. Jack thanks God every day for meeting this gorgeous man. His hands caress the tension away. His lips swallow Jack’s murmurs of unease. His laughter eases Jack’s troubled soul.

He is Jack’s everything.

Jack would do anything for him.

Jack would take a bullet for him.

* * *

_Jack has taken a bullet for him. Many, in fact._

_Such as that time when Jack had run out into the open despite Gabriel hissing angrily at him, and the pack of OR-15s had immediately zeroed in on him. Jack had raced off like a rabbit, blood pounding through his veins, heart beating so loud he was certain the omnics could track just that, dodging behind abandoned cars and into crumbling buildings, leading the OR-15s on a merry chase through a dead city, while Gabriel picked them off one by one from behind and Ana popped mechanical heads from 1,500 meters away. If not for Jack making himself their prey, he and Gabriel would have been trapped inside that building staring a pack of OR-15s in the face. He earned a new bullet wound for that trick, but they both survived, and later when Gabriel had grumbled at him, the blond had given him that infamous shit-eating grin, blue eyes bright even as he grimaced from the pain of another wound being wrapped up, and said, “I wasn’t worried, Commander. I knew you’d get them all before they got me.”_

_“Cap, you’re a reckless idiot,” Reyes had growled. But as he’d stormed away, he’d been fighting a smile._

_And then there was that one time Gerard’s intel had pinpointed the location of a group of civilians, cowering in a disintegrating building, too close to a unit of E-54 bastion units, and the plan had been to go in quietly, under the cover of darkness, and with Reinhardt and Torbjörn ready to cause a ruckus elsewhere in the city the minute Gabriel and Jack were ready to move the noncombatants out. Mina’s localized signal had worked to confuse and distract the E-54s long enough for Gabriel and Jack to slip in unnoticed. Really, the plan should have worked perfectly._

_They hadn’t accounted for a crying baby._

_The crying baby Gabriel had somehow miraculously caught when the child’s mother had collapsed beneath a hail of bullets; the baby Gabriel had clutched beneath his coat, turning his back with a curse to the omnic bearing down on him, shielding the child with his own body. Jack had yelled and thrown himself at the E-54, using all his super soldier strength—and then some—to slam the butt of his massive rifle directly (and admittedly, accidentally, or perhaps more accurately, instinctively) into the bastion’s frontal ocular scanning unit, shattering the mechanical skull entirely. There’d been an audible inhumane sound from the dying omnic as it had collapsed beneath him._

_“Go!” Jack had yelled. “I got this! All of you, go! Follow Commander Reyes!” And then he’d leaped like a madman into the next E-54, even as Ana’s bullets had whizzed by and shattered the red ocular unit on this one too. He’d heard Reinhardt’s massive hammer pounding into the back line of the bastions, the sound of tortured metal and German shouts ripping through the air._

_The baby’s mother hadn’t made it, but the baby did, and so had all the other civilians. Jack had walked away from that fight with a few new bullet wounds and a broken arm, but Gabriel had been unscathed._

_“You’re fucking insane,” Gabriel had growled at him in the field hospital. His dark eyes had softened just a bit. “But because of that, I made it out alive… and with the baby and the rest of the civilians.” Then those dark eyes had hardened again. “Don’t do that crazy shit again, Morrison.” And then he’d stormed off._

_Jack had laughed—_

_—_ and wakes up laughing in the night, suddenly aware that his husband is sitting up in bed beside him. Watching him. There’s a tension to his body that Jack isn’t used to seeing.

“What were you dreaming about?” Gabriel asks quietly.

Jack rubs the sleep and the lingering confusion of the dream from his eyes, sitting up slowly. He flicks on the small lamp on his nightstand, which gives off a gentle glow. “I was dreaming about… the war,” he murmurs. “The war we fought together…” Then he stops, puzzled.

“What war?” Gabriel says. His eyes are dark pools in the dim light. “We’ve never fought in a war, Jack.” He stirs. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been… so tense and jumpy lately. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You sometimes talk in your sleep, say names of people we don’t know and have never met. Ana? Reinhardt? What’s Reinhardt, a European name?” He lets out a deep breath. “Where does my husband go in his dreams? And why would he dream about war? Why would you go to some horrible place when we have everything we need, right here?”

The words _I can’t help what I’m dreaming_ die on Jack’s lips beneath the tender kiss Gabriel plants on him. The tension has drained from Gabriel’s body and he lays down next to Jack, wrapping an arm around him, drawing him close, hands trailing down Jack’s chest. As Jack’s eyes watch those dark fingers work their way across pale skin, it suddenly occurs to him that he is unmarked. Absently he looks down at his abdomen where he obtained a bullet wound from the time he acted like prey to a bunch of OR-15s so Gabriel could pick them off from behind. He can’t find the vicious scar on his left arm from the searing wound of an E-54 swinging its disturbingly-sharp arm about to fend off a berserk super soldier trying to bash its head in.

Jack is pulled down to the bed fully by his husband, who is dropping tender kisses all down his unblemished body. His body reacts because he cannot help but respond to this beautiful man, and soon enough his moans and gasps fill the room under the careful ministrations of Gabriel’s talented mouth.

And yet the scent of stale smoke-filled air and the taste of blood and sweat and oil lingers on his senses for a long time after.

* * *

The tractor needs work again and it is a perfectly sunny cloudless day. The Indiana summer breeze whispers through the nearby cornfields, and distantly Jack can hear the cows mooing as they graze on emerald-green fields.

He’s bent over the open engine, his shirt riding up and his jeans riding low in a way that would normally cause Gabriel to say something about his ass crack, when the silence hits.

It’s instantaneous, how Jack suddenly stands straight, wrench in hand, staring at the cornfields that have gone perfectly still, not at all hearing the noise of cows or cluck of hens or the song of wild birds. His skin tingles, and he lifts his head to sniff the air. Distantly, there’s a rumble of thunder.

Jack knows the earth the way only a farmer’s son could, and he knows something is coming. Something hunts.

— **_got to get these people out of here_ ** _—_

He turns toward the familiar voice, but there’s nothing there. Only cornfields and a bright summer day for miles.

— **_have dispatched medical transport units to our location, ETA in seven minutes_ ** _—_

Jack turns his head once more, following the new rumble, and this time there’s something on the horizon. He narrows his eyes.

“Jack?”

He doesn’t turn at the sudden sound of his husband’s voice. He holds up a hand to quiet him instead, tilting his head slightly to the side to listen to the silence. Gabriel stills.

— **_need that shield to hold, Lindholm_ ** _!—_

Dark clouds on the horizon, blooming steadily across blue sky. Jack takes a step in that direction.

“Jack, no!”

The thunder amplifies, rolling across midwestern plains, the clouds rapidly expanding to hide the sun. Jack takes another step, dropping the wrench to the suddenly muddy earth.

— **_have your orders, Alpha Team, move out! We need to buy these civilians tim_ ** _—_

“Jack. Please!”

The rumbling continues, and becomes clearer, lightning racing across a dark sky.

— **_Liao! I have a special job for you_ **—

“Jack, my love, _please…_ don’t go. You don’t have to go!”

For the first time, Jack turns away from the rolling thunder and the horizon, even as huge drops of water begin to fall from a heavy sky. Gabriel looks anguished, a hand reaching out to him. Jack walks to him but doesn’t thread his fingers through his husband’s like he normally would have.

“I think…” Jack starts softly.

There’s a crackling sound that interrupts him, the static of a short-range radio. It comes from somewhere off to Jack’s left. He doesn’t turn to look, just stays focused on his beloved husband.

 **_Liao! I have a special job for you._ ** **_  
_** **_Commander_ ** **?**

“You don’t have to go,” Gabriel says again, desperately.

Jack touches his face gently, fingers trailing across his check. “I think,” Jack starts again, “I think I do. _You_ still need me.”

It is not thunder.

_It is the pounding of endless bullets and lasers hitting Torbjörn’s hard light shields, causing crackling light to dance across the night sky. It’s the roar of an angry German Crusader calling out a challenge as he fires the rockets on his suit and hammer, hurtling across the muddy fields to greet the first omnics to find an opening through the shields, other soldiers following in his wake. It’s the steady hum of approaching transports, racing to evacuate an emergency field hospital and refugee camp._

Gabriel shakes his head, reaching up to touch his hand, great sadness in his dark eyes. “But you don’t even know if _I_ love you out there.”

 **_Liao! I have a special job for you._ ** **_  
_** **_Commander_ ** **?** **  
****_I need you to make sure—_ **

Jack smiles slightly, a little melancholy. “But if I stay here, I’ll never know. Besides, even if you don’t… I still have to be there for you. At your side. Watching your six. That is where I belong.”

Rain drenches them both, their faces wet. Gabriel squeezes his hand—

 **_Liao! I have a special job for you._ ** **_  
_** **_Commander_ ** **?** **  
****_I need you to make sure Jack makes it safely to the medical transport._ ** **_  
_** **_Understood, sir._ **

* * *

“Liao! I have a special job for you.”

She hurries through the rainstorm, ducking under the flimsy cover provided by the medical tent, her uniform drenched. From a nearby bench, a radio crackles to life, barely comprehensible military chatter over the airwaves.

“Commander?”

Reyes is calmly arming his shotguns, as if there wasn’t a fucking battalion of omnic units marching on their position, as if he wasn’t responsible for hundreds of lives, most of them civilian and many of them injured and all of them terrified, thanks to a surprise attack. He slides a shotgun into the holster.

“I need you to make sure Jack makes it safely to the medical transport,” he says.

Dr. Liao glances over at the field cot, which is thankfully one of those with a battery that powers a low-charge hover unit on the underside of the cot, making it possible to float for a short while. Long enough for her to escort it safely to a medical transport.

“Understood, sir,” the robotics expert says, looking back at her commanding officer and nodding grimly.

Jack gasps as his eyes snap open. His body aches terribly all over. The sound of omnic and human gunfire in the distance is clear as day despite the pattering of rain on the roof of the tent.

“And I need someone,” the soldier croaks, “to get me my fucking gun.” He starts to roll off the cot, planting his bare feet in mud and cursing soundly as the world spins around him.

A hand on his shoulder steadies him, and a moment later he’s staring into the dark, calm, serene eyes of his superior officer.

“Morrison, don’t be a fucking idiot,” Reyes growls. “You’ve been in a goddamn coma for days. You’re not going anywhere but straight to the goddamn medical transport. Liao will make sure you get there—”

The world is slowing its spin, and Jack shakes his head. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not going anywhere but wherever you’re going. God bless the United States Military Industrial Complex, I am fine. All the crap they pumped into me has got to be good for something. I just need to find my damn boots.”

Reyes hasn’t removed his hand from Jack’s shoulder, and the blond looks up, their gazes locking.

The radio crackles to life again, something about a transport unit being shot out of the sky.

“You need my gun, and you need me, Gabriel,” Jack says quietly. He pats the hand at his shoulder as Reyes searches his cornflower blue eyes. A current of something passes between them.

“Yeah,” Reyes says finally, standing straight. “I sure fucking do. It's a surprise attack. Thank fuck Torb had already set up the shields; we thought they might try some shit. Liao, make sure the last of the civilians get to the rendezvous point.” He calmly moves to the bench with the radio, picking up a pair of boots from the ground there.

“Of course, sir,” Dr. Liao says, nodding. She looks at the blond. “You sure you’re alright to fight, Jack?”

He nods, accepting the boots handed to him. “I’ll be fine, Mina. You need to go.” She’s not a soldier. She doesn’t belong on the battlefield.

There’s an explosion in the distance and a thundering that makes the ground tremble, and a fireball lights up the night.

Liao winces, but neither super soldier reacts. Jack is quickly putting socks and boots on and Reyes returns to the radio, barking orders into it. She glances at them both, shaking her head slightly at their calm, and then runs off into the night to help with the rest of the evacuation.

“I’m glad to be back,” Jack murmurs.

“Back? Where did you go?” Reyes says, turning off the radio and reaching for his second gun. Beside him, leaning against the bench, is Jack’s own rifle, gleaming and ready.

Jack hesitates. “Someplace… I thought was home,” he says after a moment, standing up. His head is clear and despite the lingering aches and pains in his body, he is ready.

Reyes turns back to him with raised brows. “Home?”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t.”

Those dark eyes search his for a long moment. “What is, then?” Reyes holds out the rifle.

Jack accepts it, the familiar weight against his chest comforting. “Where ever you are, Reyes. Watching your six.”

Standing face to face, dark and blue eyes meet, and for just a moment in time, the war grinds to a halt. For just a fraction of a second, those smoldering eyes go soft. Jack can almost taste the Indiana summer on his lips again…

…but then there’s a fierce crackling sound, the hard light shield beginning to shatter for good. Harsh radiance lights up the night.

Gabriel jerks his head. “Well then... welcome home, Indiana. Try not to get shot into a coma this time, yeah?” He gives Jack a half smile, the most that can be spared in war, before he’s gone into the night.

Jack is, as ever, powerless to do anything but trail behind that broad back. Ever since he fell into Gabriel’s orbit, at a top-secret location for a top-secret military experimental program, Jack has been helplessly pulled along in this man’s wake.

No matter what is in Gabriel’s heart, Jack knows. He _knows_. He knows none of it is worth it without _him._ He knows where his place is. 

Jack follows Gabriel into the storm.

**Author's Note:**

> Dearest Rhys, 
> 
> Back in October when you were signing up for the Secret Santa event, and you shared your prompt with me, I thought to myself, "Wow, I could really do something with that, given the chance. I think I could make something great." It's SUCH a great prompt. But given the dozens of people taking part in this event, I figured it was against the odds that I would get to write for this prompt, so I shrugged it off and hoped that your secret santa would be able to do it justice. 
> 
> I should have played the lottery. 
> 
> Imagine, if you will, the shriek of joy I gave when I opened up the email the day assignments were given out. What were the odds indeed? 
> 
> I endeavored to write the best possible story I could for you, because it was important to me that I produce a masterpiece for you. I don't know if I really achieved that, ultimately. But I do hope you enjoy it. I know this has been an especially tough year for you. I hope that this small token of my appreciation at least gives you something to smile about, if only for a moment. I hope it reminds you that someone in the Pacific NW of the US loves you dearly. Merry Christmas, darling. 
> 
> Special thanks to my beta reader, Rosie, without whom this piece would not exist in its present form. Thank you for helping me in the beginning when I was flustered and stuck. Getting this right meant so much to me, and you set me on the path to get there. 
> 
> Much love, 
> 
> Claws


End file.
